This is why young women are so angry
It was weird listening to Andrew Little surmising to the United Nations Human Rights Council this week that New Zealand was failing women. It’s not weird because the statistics he was referring to are surprising – we all know the grim fact that one in three women will experience emotional and physical violence.
What’s weird is that here was a middle-aged guy, albeit a very smart one, who’d managed to hit a ‘‘young woman nerve’’ on the head. Because yes, right now we do feel a little failed. Not all of us women, obviously. But it is a definite undercurrent running through young women’s debate. Read young women’s media, eavesdrop on your daughters, poke around some Facebook groups, and you’ll soon get a sense of what we’re feeling.
I’m not talking about a feeling of deep, screaming, all-consuming failure. We aren’t rampaging and pillaging through dairies grabbing Tim Tams and Kleenex in some post-apocalyptic rage. It’s not even as potent as the Parisian protesters’ variety. There’ll be no feudal, fiery, Frenchy uprising, we didn’t even make a big deal out of the January 19 Women’s March protests.
It’s more of the quiet, listless cynicism. And it’s probably at its worst in my age group – women aged 16-24 are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than other demographics. So if we have been assaulted, the raw memories are painfully present. Add in the natural loss of idealism that comes from growing up, and you can start to see where we’re coming from.
But the whole reason I’m banging on about this is because it’s feeling especially painful right now. And if you’re bemused over why young women were so fired up over the Gillette advert, or why we get so mad over things like catcalling, or even if you think we’re just angry all the time . . . well, maybe this will help explain.
Young women grow up knowing that theoretically we’re at risk. We’re told not to talk to strangers, not to walk home, not wear anything short . . . you’re always carrying around a deep, subconscious idea that you’re probably at risk of something nasty. Then you get older and realise that it isn’t theoretical, it actually happened to you, your friend or your mum. And the real kicker, the part that makes you cynical, is when you realise that you probably can’t do anything about it.
It happened for me when I was sitting on my best friend’s sofa, trying to persuade her to go to the police after a sexual assault. She just looked at me, dropped her chin and in a small, flat voice said: ‘‘Why? What would that do?’’
I couldn’t really argue with that. We know the police have supposedly evolved from the ‘‘what were you wearing/were you drinking/don’t you think you were leading him on’’ line of questioning. But we all saw in the Roast Busters case how they were found not to have followed the best practice for interviewing victims, let alone the crashing blow that nothing actually happened as a result of all the inquiry.
We’ve all heard stories of the other girls reliving painstaking details of assault for police files only to be told that ‘‘you might be right but we can’t prove it, so . . .’’. We all know that 13 per cent of the minute number of cases recorded by the police end in conviction. It’s not a climate that inspires you with the infinite possibility of justice.
And yeah, it’ll probably feel less painful as we get older, we’ll realise that we’re not unique in feeling failed by the government. But right now the sense of failure is getting jackhammered open by what’s been a stellar week for women.
If you’re bemused over why young women were so fired up over the Gillette advert, or why we get so mad over things like catcalling
. . . well, maybe this will help explain.
Melbourne student Aiia Maasarwe was brutally murdered. And of course, this is just weeks after the death of backpacker Grace Millane. Which is just months after the murder of Eurydice Dixon. And these are just the close-to-home examples. Our phones pour similar stories from around the world into our social feeds by the hour. And now clever algorithms make sure that, once you’ve read one grisly story of a young woman’s murder, your phone gets a daily deluge of them. Not to mention treats like the video of the Roast Busters dude saying he’s not a bad guy, bro.
Each time you get a notification, it’s like a little nod to the subconscious voice that reminds you you’re never really safe. And no, we’re not wandering around in a perpetual existential crisis over whether we’re going to die. But it does make it hard to relax in public when your brain is forever pinging with ‘‘Hey, remember this woman’s gruesome murder? Let me remind you . . .’’
This isn’t meant to be a woe-is-me feminist rant on society’s ever-present failings. It’s just a polite reminder that young women don’t feel very reassured right now. So before you launch into ‘‘I don’t get why women are so angry’’, this is why.